


Surely Goodness and Mercy (Will Follow Me)

by rhythmicroman



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: (ik theyre not zombies pls dont attack me), Accents, Apocalypse, Blood, Blood and Violence, Domestic Fluff, ELLIE IS A CHILD, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Fire, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Guitars, Light Angst, Mild Blood, No Romance, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Singing, Very Very Light Angst, Zombie Apocalypse, based on the tlou2 trailer, ellie is his not-dead daughter ok, im british and i cant write southern accents ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 02:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12855081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhythmicroman/pseuds/rhythmicroman
Summary: “Joel, will you sing for me now?”He laughs, muffled behind her hood – but makes no move of affirmation, only continuing to strum his guitar’s strings, slowly and melodically.---A collection of tiny stories about Joel and Ellie's ~family bonding~.Fair warning: may contain a fuckton of headcanons and me projecting aggressively onto Joel. Oh, and cursing, and using long-ass metaphors to make me sound smart. You have been warned.





	Surely Goodness and Mercy (Will Follow Me)

**Author's Note:**

> my favourite thing is misleadingly comedic chapter titles  
> cutesy family fluff is a close second, though, so

“Joel, will you sing for me now?”

He laughs, muffled behind her hood – but makes no move of affirmation, only continuing to strum his guitar’s strings, slowly and melodically.

She’s sure this song is by someone famous, with a million people reaching up at them as they play on a stage, someone who’d sell records faster than the spores could spread; but she’d never seen the time where people sang on stages. She almost wished she had, so she’d be able to imagine it.

It sounded nice, nonetheless, and she lay with her head and upper back against the wall, lower back supported by her pack. Joel continued strumming for a minute, then paused, and continued, this time a little faster.

He opened his mouth and sang.

It was nothing like the songs Ellie had heard on the old CDs and tapes – his voice was too rough, and too quiet, and a couple of times it faded when he met her gaze – but she decided she preferred it this way. This was Joel’s voice, after all, and Joel, with his old guitar and older songs, was the closest to that stage celeb she’d ever get to see.

* * *

 

She picked it up pretty quick, she thought, running her thumb over the strings – or maybe time had flew, now that she didn’t have to worry about the Fireflies. Joel was watching her again, winding a bandage around something deep and bloody.

She glanced over, and winced, and looked up with worry in her eyes.

“Infected?”

He laughed weakly, ran his fingers across the bite on his forearm, and smiled.

“No,” he said, and she believed him.

Belief isn’t always enough to forget the second of worry in his eyes.

* * *

 

One day she snapped a string. Joel had looked up, practically given himself whiplash, and shook his head quietly. He said there was no way they’d find any spares, that they’d have to give up.

She made sure to make as much of a fuss as possible. She knew how he worked.

(And in the morning, there was a new string, and Joel was kicking a smashed up – was that a ukulele? – into the furnace for firewood.)

* * *

 

“What’re you doin’, kiddo?”

She lowered her guitar slightly, didn’t look up. She was almost ashamed of the carnage, of what she’d done in so little time. Joel had taught her how to do it, but that didn’t make the thought of admitting she’d slaughtered an entire fucking building of people any more appealing.

“You really gonna go through wi' this?”

He was wheezing slightly, she thought, as she put the guitar down. Probably got jumped for some shit. Probably got some old enemy she didn’t know about – Joel was like that. Maybe it was whoever’s ukulele that was, a couple years back.

She turned towards him, hesitantly, and glanced up in silence. He was leaning against the wall, looking at her, and she almost felt like a little kid again – then grazed her thumb along the tattoo on her forearm, and remembered why she was there. Why there was blood on her fingers and more on the floor. Why she was running, away and towards.

“I’m gonna find, and I’m gonna kill, every last one of them.”

He didn’t try to stop her.

He never tried to stop her.

He just walked over, shifted the guitar onto his lap, and breathed.

“Okay.”

The song he played wasn’t like the one when she was a kid – it was deeper, slower, and the strings were coated crimson. This time, when she closed her eyes and imagined, there was nobody on a stage, with a million adoring fans – just her and Joel, alone in the world, with a couple of guns and some bloody guitar strings.

It was always just them, after all. The past was but a fairy-tale.


End file.
